Multiple Perspectives Genre: Text Conversation between Esperanza and Sally
For this piece, I chose to embody multiple perspectives through a text conversation between Esperanza and Sally, who I read as something like foils to each other because of their vastly different positions at the end of the novel. I imagined their conversation would center around boys because of Sally’s consistent orbit around boys in her life, but I opened it with a text from Esperanza to Sally asking about her shoes to situate this conversation within the context of their friendship, first. Sally and Esperanza’s friendship appears to be one that is genuine, but has a sort of hierarchy because of Esperanza’s admiration for Sally’s decisive self-expression, manifested in her eyeliner and shoes. Because both girls are not even in eighth grade, the novel conveys a tension between wanting to grow up and become a someone who is beautiful and powerful, but simultaneously fearing the violence and oppression inherent within the confines of patriarchal gender roles. Not only do both Esperanza and Sally grapple with the tension between child and adult, but they also deal with expressions of patriarchy and toxic masculinity in their current lives, specifically through boys at school and Sally’s relationship with her father. With these contextual elements in mind, in this text conversation, we see Esperanza and Sally communicate in different conversational styles: Esperanza demonstrates a reach for connection from a lower position of relational power through her use of positive language, emojis, and exclamation points, while Sally’s texts feature a more stand-offish, slightly dismissive tone through her lack of punctuation and use of “haha” to minimize issues. However, these roles are somewhat reversed when Esperanza is able to provide strength and comfort to Sally in an intensely vulnerable moment. Although this text conversation is short, it provides significant insight to the forces acting upon the girls and the ways in which they try to mitigate them within the context of friendship.
Photo used under Creative Commons from KWDesigns